Posts by Godfrey

Quote from Matt

Essentially Epicurus affirms that there is a God, this God is “immortal and happy” ....

Quote from Matt

...why is God immortal and happy? Why does he never get irritated? Why doesn’t he have any administration? Why doesn’t he interact with humankind?...

Matt, I might be nit-picking but I think there is an important point to make here. Epicurus never referred to "God," always to "the gods."

To my understanding there is never a single instance of one type of entity in the infinite Epicurean universe, so there can't be God, only gods. Missing this detail, even in apophatic theology, opens the door to a more mystical interpretation than what I think Epicurus had in mind.

Even if using the term "God" is force of habit I think it's important to treat it like certain descriptors that are avoided in the racial justice movement. That's probably a bad example: I'm not saying that saying God comes close to a racial slur! But refining one's vocabulary refines one's thinking.

From the middle of column 51 to the end brings to mind the discussion near the end of the Barrett podcast concerning humans being an integral part of a social network (this is only fractionally online ). She and the host discuss how you can contribute either positively or negatively to the network and, over time, you basically reap what you have sown. Epicurus appears to be exemplary in this regard.

As to the preceeding columns, there's quite a bit to digest. Some of it seems to be contradictory to my current understanding. Which makes it quite interesting!

The article by AA Long, "Aisthesis, Prolepsis and Linguistic Theory in Epicurus," makes a case for the repeated exposure theory and together with DeWitt's view makes a good presentation of both sides of the issue. I still haven't read her book but Barrett's work might bring the discussion into our current state of knowledge which seems very promising!

I'm only listening in bits and haven't got that far, but her whole line of research is quite intriguing when compared to the Epicurean perspective. I think I might read her book so I can consider these ideas more fully.

I agree with your take Don. It seems similar to Epicurus' physics in that he seems to have been on the right track, although modern science is fine tuning the details. Once again, it would be nice to have his elaboration on the prolepses to really understand how his canon fits together.

Of course this is the first I've heard of this modern line of inquiry, so it's premature to jump to conclusions. Lots to dig into!

Listening to the Ted talk, I noticed she spoke a lot about predictions. It seems like these may correspond to prolepses, and it's also interesting to note that these predictions respond not just to sensations but also to pleasure and pain. If I'm understanding this correctly Epicurean sensations are external stimuli, Epicurean feelings are internal stimuli, and predictions which she speaks of are how we process both external and internal stimuli. This processing then results in such things as emotions, thoughts, opinions, actions, etc. How we work with these emotions, thoughts, opinions, actions then adds to our experiential storehouse, which in turn affects our future predictions. Am I getting that right???

Oh I just found all her videos (including these) on her multimedia page.

I might be missing something but I don't see a link to the Ted talk. Is this it? talk? https://www.ted.com/talks/lisa_fel…hem?language=en

Also there's this really short youtube video:

I haven't watched these yet but the subject sounds fascinating.

First, I enjoyed the discussion on death in the podcast: several good points brought up.

Second, I don't recall that the attached paper deals specifically with the Tetrapharmakos, but it is a study of some of the controversies surrounding epitomizing Epicurean philosophy in ancient times and may be of some interest.

I just sent her a request for the full text of the preconceptions paper through Researchgate. If I get a positive response I'll post the paper in a new thread. Meanwhile I'll probably get lots of emails from Researchgate suggesting other papers, at least if they're similar to Academia. Might be a good source of information though: I noticed that they have a paper on Epicurus' concept of the void by Brad Inwood.

Don thanks for pointing out that the author is a woman. Erroneous assumption on my part.

Yes "factive" isn't very clear.

As I understand the paper he makes a clear distinction between perceptions and beliefs. Perceptions are true and not describable by propositions, while beliefs are testable propositions and therefore not a criterion of truth.

An example he uses, with reservations, is that of a photograph. Perceptions can be compared to a photograph in that they pick up the information, but they don't store it as a photograph does. He also discusses that eidola include not just information about an object but also available information about the context of the object. This is one reason that they are true, but information regarding a specific object of perception needs to be verified through numerous instances of perception.

I found the attached paper to be quite thought provoking, particularly regarding the eidola. The paper focuses on the senses, which the author refers to as perceptions. It's a discussion on the Epicurean assertion that all sensations are true, and the author addresses this partly through examining the eidola.

Reading about the eidola in this way gave me an opportunity to ruminate on them as a proto-scientific attempt to understand perception via atomic theory. Epicurus covered a lot of ground with them (from objects, to dreams, to visions) and it's interesting to think about how these functions in early atomic theory apply to the science of perception today.

There's more to the paper than that; definitely worth perusing.

I'm not sure if I was clear in my post as I was in a turkey coma.... I disagree with how the authors interpret EP, and part of their interpretation is "absence of pain." We've discussed that extensively here on the forum and I for one agree that "absence of pain" is neither a valid nor actionable interpretation of pleasure as the goal of life. What I find interesting in the paper, although I haven't finished reading it, is that the last half or so invalidates "absence of pain" as an actionable goal. Or at least that's how I'm reading it so far. So the last half or so actually supports the position that we've come to here regarding pleasure v the absence of pain.

I've only read up through section 5.4, but find it quite interesting in that the authors interpret the goal of EP as absence of pain and then show (beginning in 5.4) that modern research invalidates absence of pain as a valid goal. Apparently modern research has validated many of the positions that we tend to take here.

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Pain relief and the escape from expected pain leads to positive affect (e.g. Frijda, 1988; Lazarus, 1991), but continuous absence of pain does not necessarily lead to happy tranquillity, but can also be boring. Headey and Wearing (1992) describe the fact that a significant minority of people have low levels of psychological distress and are unhappy at the same time. Csikszentmihaly (1999) states that happiness results from optimal functioning that can be found between boredom and anxiety. These findings contradict Epicurus’ notion of happiness as mere absence of pain. Epicurus’ happiness advice does not cater for exhilarating aspects of a business man’s life that involves risks and losses but also makes one live to the full and be happy on balance. He also did not think of anhedonia, the inability to experience emotion, that is characteristic of people with a depressive disorder. This condition is often more difficult to bear than emotional pain itself. Happiness is definitely something other than the mere absence of all pain (Bergsma, 1995).

Headey and Wearing (1992, pp. 4–8) also notice that some people are happy despite the fact that they experience high levels of psychological distress. People often perceive life as both quite satisfying and quite stressful. This goes against Epicurus’ idea that happiness can be equated with absence of pain. Still, the combination of high distress with happiness can be reconciled with Epicurus’ philosophy, because of his idea that we can learn to tolerate pain.

The independence of positive and negative affect has two consequences for Epicurus’ position. His notion that avoiding pain is sufficient for establishing a good quality of life may be too conservative. The second consequence is that he neglected the role of positive affect. We start with a discussion of his ideas to avoid pain.

So while I'm not convinced by the authors' interpretation of EP, I'm looking forward to continuing to read how they invalidate the absence of pain interpretation.

Thanks for posting this, Brett!

Where is it that the Epicurean gods are described as being in human form and speaking Greek? Is that in Cicero? Lucretius? I wonder how that relates to this discussion....

I haven't yet read the full Sedley piece so I might be repeating something in there or in Jackson. But for the full context of this and similar discussions we've got to keep in mind that Epicurus was considering a very specific notion of gods, which of course was the Greek idea. I think that that's part of the difficulty in that it's very tempting for people today to intermingle a variety of conceptions of gods and god and "spirituality" with the Greek conception of gods. Similarly with the physics: part of the beauty of Epicurean physics is how relevant they are to today's physics. This can beguile us into conflating our ideas with his. Taken together this makes for a very tangled web: modern notions of physics can confuse Epicurean notions of gods, and vice versa.

Regarding the prolepses, I've no problem with a prolepsis of justice (fairness?) as it does seem to be something seen in children and some animals. Plus the PDs are quite specific on how to work with that prolepsis. A prolepsis of the gods is more difficult to sort out: is this prolepsis supposed to be the same in all cultures?

Thanks for those, Don.

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It's not my personal experience of “the Other”...

Susan would you be comfortable elaborating on this? I'm wondering if that could be helpful in defining what exactly we're discussing.

This essay of interest popped up in my feed:

https://www.academia.edu/28618657/Nothi…%A1ximo_de_Tiro

From the conclusion:

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Maximus undertakes, in an Academic stance, the defence of Epicurus by letting him speak on his own behalf in an oration carefully fleshed out with a good deal of Epicurean doctrines; by means of this figure he states the case for the “other” side of the debate regarding pleasure, a fundamental one to those who want to be initiated in philosophy. Besides, at the centre of the oration, Socrates himself appears compulsively in pursuit of beauty, nonetheless able to unite pleasure and virtue. Furthermore, the source for this hedonistic Socrates were those dialogues in which he involved himself in dialectical enquiries with handsome youths for the sake of education. All things considered, Maximus has given Epicurus his due, to the point of making of Socrates an Epicurean of sorts, someone from whom much can be learnt.

I had never heard of Maximus, but apparently he devoted a few orations to pleasure. His orations can be purchased on Amazon for a modest $900 . Is anyone familiar with him?

The blessed and incorruptible being has no troubles itself nor causes trouble for others; therefore it does not experience feelings of anger or indebtedness, for such feelings signify weakness.

(A combination of several translations based on discussion here: Blessed and Imperishable?)